First of all I spoke to my new host about them becoming my new registrar and paid them £5.30 to initiate a domain transfer request. I then went to my old hosts and paid them £14.10 to transfer my domain over to the new guys. From the new guys I received a mail with a link in it - clicking on it signified my willingness to transfer. I also needed the old host's approval so I submitted a support ticket including my receipt number for the payment and the addresses of the new name servers. A few days later I had reply - the guy at the old host needed the domain names for the new name servers, not the IP addresses. I duly forwarded them on but didn't hear anything. Then the transfer request expired.
Not to be put off I talked to the new hosts and they said to just ask for a reinitialisation when my old hosts agreed to do it. I submitted another support request asking for a good time to sort this out. No response. This was about a month ago.
Last week I finally got myself into gear again and submitted another support request - "It's been sent to the appropriate people". No further response. I currently have 9 days left in which to sort this out before my name expires, so what are my recourses? I've got the guy's mobile number but it always drops through to his voicemail and needless to say I don't get a response >_<
Tomorrow I'll try ringing again and I'll submit another support ticket. I've also decided to use a 3rd party domain name handler to manage my name as I'm (understandably) wary of letting a host deal with my name in future. Is there any recourse I can get if the host refuses to give up my domain name?
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your opinions.
My experience (since 1994 or so....): I've had -
1. a local host (my ISP at the time, who was incredibly expensive as well as not providing stuff I needed); I opted for "real" hosting on a free host (to remain unnamed for obvious reasons) which worked for a year or so, until the free host turned into an absolute nightmare.
2. a "big-name" fairly expensive host (went here from the freebie above), not too bad a deal - until they jacked their "basic hosting option" 200% within a year of my move there.
3. the host I'm with now, who gives value for money in a HUGE way, and where I'm planning to stay virtually forever - moved here in about late 1999/early 2000.
All of these (four, including the original option with my then-ISP) have one single thing in common: all I did to move domains from one to the other was to upload files to the new space and then change the DNS at registrar-level. I did not ONCE have to ask permission of the "old" host, or do any fancy notification-hoops with the new one. I just moved the files, changed the DNS, and usually notified the old host that due to thus-and-so, I had moved and wouldn't be back.
Caveat: if you have search-engine stuff to worry about, I can't give you any info. I don't do that, didn't ever with any of the above moves. No clue how that might affect things. But WHY do you need the overt permission of your current host to move? Sorry - I just can't quite get that one....
I spoke to my new host about them becoming my new registrar
I think it's the registrar part where a release comes into play (or gets obstructed). I've run into one instance of a current registrar blocking a transfer of registration - but never an obstacle with hosting transfer.
There is a window of 60-days in some registrar contracts. That is, no transfer of registrar is allowed within 60 days of the renewal date. In the case where I had trouble, we were 70 days out and they just created obstacles until we hit the 60-day limit.
It was worth the small extra expense for me to renew there, and then transfer out immediately. And now I do read the small print - every word.
